Tune Tuesday

I am surprised that as much as I love blues music, I haven’t featured it more.  Today, I can do just that as I wish Happy birthday to blues legend Howling Wolf.

He was born Chester Arthur Burnett on this day in 1910. He was one of a few blues singers who took the acoustic Delta Blues and helped turn it into the electric Chicago Blues. His name is right up there with Muddy Waters, Elmore James and John Lee Hooker as one who was a major influence on the blues and blues musicians.

The folks at AllMusic said that he was “a primal, ferocious blues belter with a roster of classics rivaling anyone else, and a sandpaper growl of a voice that has been widely imitated”. Rolling Stone magazine listed him on their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time at #54.

His hits include Smokestack Lightning, Spoonful, Wang Dang Doodle, and The Red Rooster. In 1964 he released a song that has been called “one of the defining classics of Chicago electric blues,” Killing Floor.  The song was big enough that Led Zeppelin adapted the song into their hit “The Lemon Song.”. They named Howlin’ Wolf as a co-author on the tune.

One of Wolf’s friends and guitar player, Hubert Sumlin,  says that the song uses the killing floor “as a metaphor or allegory for male-female relationships: “Down on the killing floor – that means a woman has you down, she went out of her way to try to kill you. She at the peak of doing it, and you got away now … You know people have wished they was dead – you been treated so bad that sometimes you just say, ‘Oh Lord have mercy.’ You’d rather be six feet in the ground.“

Check out this one….

Happy 115th birthday to Howlin’ Wolf!!